When I first began coding I was overwhelmed and unsure if I was going to be able to do this. One of my first blogs was about feelings of incompetence in coding.
After writing this bog, I started to follow my directions of practicing more. This led to me putting concepts together and beginning to understand more. I also noted that I didn’t have to know everything. This was important too. There are so many ways to write code and there are so many different languages that I will never know it all, because I have resources to help. I can learn from the internet, mentors, books, peers, and even people in my current position one day.
My biggest breakthrough was when we started to learn Ruby. Some of the variables and concepts we had been learning were visible to me in the back end. I was able to add a pry and test out what my code was doing before sending it to react.
By understanding the back end, I was able to focus on new ideas in React and implement them.
As I was coding my own projects more, specifically my final project I felt more comfortable stepping outside of my comfort zone and trying to create things I had never tried or seen how to do before.
Becoming a software developer is a journey not a race. It doesn’t take a day, but you can learn something new each day and take it with you to the next. It is like building a skyscraper. It starts with a foundation. In this case the foundation is learning the basics. Once there is a strong foundation of the basics, you can begin the architecture to build large extravagant buildings that serve many purposes.
Moving forward, I know it is important to continue learning and to ask when you don’t know how to do something. Coding is ever evolving and there are new tools available every day. It is important to research when something doesn’t make sense and to always refine your craft.
My schooling is ending, but my journey is just beginning. I have much to learn and to refine. I have more comfort zones to step out of. There are mistakes to be made, code to be broken and fixed again and broken so that it can be fixed once again. There is more modern styling that I can learn and implement each time I create a new web application.
I can’t wait to build something incredible and say that it all started because I wanted to learn.
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